This is a rapidly growing nation, on a new continent, and in an era of new, complex, and ever-shifting conditions. Often it is necessary to devise new methods of meeting these new conditions. We must regard the past, but we must not regard only the past. We must also think of the future; and while we must learn by experience, we can not afford to pay heed merely to the teachings of experience. The great preacher Channing in his essay on “The Union” spoke with fine insight on this very point. In commenting on the New England statesman Cabot, whom he greatly admired, he said that nevertheless “he had too much of the wisdom of experience; he wanted what may be called the wisdom of hope.” He then continued in words which have a peculiar fitness for the conditions of to-day: “We apprehend that it is possible to make experience too much our guide. There are seasons in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when the principles of experience need to be modified, when hope and trust and instinct claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs, when in truth _to dare_ is the highest wisdom.” These sentences should be carefully pondered by those men, often very good men, who forget that constructive change offers the best method of avoiding destructive change; that reform is the antidote to revolution; and that social reform is not the precursor but the preventive of socialism. [Illustration] Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.